Documentary filmmakers are using many dramatic methods to visualize their stories. From animation to visual metaphor, from dramatic re-enactments to new visual styles for interviews, the experimentation is stretching the boundaries of documentary and widening the options for storytelling.

Join us for an engaging conversation with filmmakers Mickey Duzyj (The Shining Star of Losers Everywhere), Heidi Ewing (Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You, Detropia), Tim Matsui (The Long Night), and Lana Wilson (After Tiller, The Departure) and moderator Marcia Rock (Director of News and Documentary, NYU Arthur Carter Journalism Institute).

Mickey Duzyj is an Emmy-nominated artist and director living in New York, contributing illustration and animation to clients like ESPN, Nike, Wieden+Kennedy, Rolling Stone, Vice, Time, The Ringer, and The New York Times Magazine. Recent highlights include directing the award-winning ESPN 30 for 30 short The Shining Star of Losers Everywhere, creating an illustrated sketchbook of the 2017 NBA All-Star Weekend, and illustrating the Nike Knows campaign for Nike.

Heidi Ewing, co-owner of Loki Films, is the co-director of Jesus Camp (Oscar nominee), The Boys of Baraka (Emmy nominee) 12th & Delaware (Peabody winner) and Detropia (Sundance and Emmy winner). Most recently, Ewing co-directed Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You, which premiered as the opening night film at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. Ewing is currently at work on The Arrivals, an innovative film about two successful New York City immigrants searching for a path to legalization. She and co-director Rachel Grady are also in production on a new documentary film focusing on New York’s Hasidic community. Ewing is a member of the Directors Guild and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Photo Credit: Frank Huster

Tim Matsui is an Emmy-nominated visual journalist and filmmaker focusing on human trafficking, alternative energy, and the environment. His clients have included Newsweek, Stern, Der Spiegel, GEO, Wired and many other domestic and international publications. Today, Matsui partners with editorial outlets, non profit organizations, corporations, and self publishes to tell meaningful stories built upon the tenets of journalism. A non profit founder and recipient of grants from the Alexia Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Fledgling Fund, and Fund for Investigative Journalism, he seeks to inform and engage viewers through his projects, using media for social change.

Lana Wilson is an Emmy Award-winning director, writer, and producer based in New York who works in film and television. Her first feature film, After Tiller (co-directed with Martha Shane), premiered in competition at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, and went on to win an Emmy Award for Best Documentary, and to be released in theaters in 50 cities by Oscilloscope Laboratories. The film was also nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary, four Cinema Eye Honors, a Satellite Award, and the Ridenhour Prize. Her second feature film, The Departure, is premiering in competition at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival. Wilson also works in television. She wrote and produced the premiere episode of the documentary miniseries I Am Rebel (2016), executive produced by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity). She was a story and post producer for several episodes of National Geographic Channel’s Explorer. Wilson is also story consultant for several upcoming films.

Marcia Rock’s (Moderator) documentaries cover international dilemmas, women’s issues as well as personal perspectives. She has won many awards including three local Emmys. Recently, Rock completed three films on veterans, two with Patricia Lee Stotter. Service: When Women Come Marching Home won a NY Emmy and is on World Channel. From the plight of salt harvesters in Ghana to the changing role of women in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, she has also covered Irish American and Northern Irish history. She experimented with form in her personal documentary Dancing with My Father. Rock is the director of News and Documentary at the NYU Carter Journalism Institute and she co-authored with Marlene Sanders, Waiting for Primetime: The Women of Television News.

Produced by Tracy Daniels, Amy Nicholson and Marcia Rock

Hosted by the NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute

Special Thanks to Marcia Rock, Director of News and Documentary
at the NYU Arthur Carter Journalism Institute and
Chair of NYWIFT's Documentary Committee

NYWIFT programs, screenings and events are supported, in part, by grants from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.